Saturday, February 12, 2011

Perfect tart for a great Valentine's evening (from Chef Pino Ficara)























TARTE BOUQUET DE ROSES

Dough
250g flour (all purpose)
150g butter, room temperature
70g icing sugar (superfine sugar)
2 yolks
1 pinch of salt

Frangipane filling
75g pistachios (or almonds, walnuts etc)
75g sugar
70g butter
40g thick yogurt (greek style)
1 egg
1 pinch of salt

Apple rosettes
700g water+350g sugar (for syrup)
1kg of red stark delicious (or other sweet apples)
icing sugar
pistachios chunks
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Dough  (pate sucree)
Cream butter sugar and salt, add eggs and flour. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for an hour.

Filling
15 minutes before rolling the dough mix in a food processor nuts and sugar, separately mix butter and yogurt then add it to the nuts+sugar mix, add egg and salt and mix until very smooth.

Apple rosettes
Make a syrup by boiling water and sugar. Slice the apples (without peeling them) and put them in the boiling syrup, when syrup comes back to a boil drain the apples, let cool a bit then cut the slices in half. It'll take about 3 slices for each "rose".

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Baking

Roll the dough to 4mm thickness and line a 26cm tart pan, fill with frangipane and bake for 35' at 170C. Let rest 5 minutes then arrange the apple roses, sprinkle with icing sugar and bake again for 10 minutes. Let cool and then serve with chunks of pistachios.